From whiskey river:
Stone
Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash his teeth inside a tiger.
I am happy with a stone.
From the outside the stone is a riddle;
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though [...]

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[The clock above was designed by Caroline Lisfranc, replacing the numbers on the clock face with a dozen French verbs. The English translation (starting with one o'clock and moving, duh, clockwise) is to divide, to give, to listen, to work, to love, to dream, to reflect, to laugh, to tinker, to travel, to grow, and [...]

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For Halloween last week, in their contribution to the weekly around-the-Web Poetry Friday, the folks at the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog offered up Poe’s weird — and kind of forced — “Ulalume” (full title “To — – –. Ulalume: A Ballad”).
The ensuing discussion got me thinking once more about Poe — “once more” [...]

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From whiskey river:
Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.
(Mark Twain, The [...]

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You know how in the Warner Brothers “Road Runner” cartoons, the coyote is forever running (or riding a rocket, or pogo-sticking, or being launched by an ACME Giant Slingshot) off a cliff? and at some moment he realizes that he’s done so, and as soon as he realizes it he loses all forward motion, waves [...]

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From whiskey river:
At Blackwater Pond
At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have
settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?
(Mary Oliver)
And:
In the tea ceremony, the expression [...]

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From whiskey river:
September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.
(Alexander Theroux)
For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go.
(George Washington Cable)
…and:
If we were not beings who pass quickly away like all other things, none [...]

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As I’ve mentioned (briefly) before, The Missus and I have a recent addition to our household population: a Yorkshire terrier named Sophie. That is not Sophie over at the right — it’s one “Lexi Ann,” from the dogsinduds.com site. But it’s a good place to start this post.
We got Sophie as a “rescue dog,” which [...]

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From whiskey river (originally published [PDF] in Beloit Poetry Journal, Fall/Winter 2004/2005):
It Wasn’t Death She Saw
But life:
skin dancing with flesh
like silk curtains that swirl in the wind
above her mother’s window
up up   now puff!   and in again
Or breath — is the wind breathing?
She’d been playing in the grass when it happened:
the snake flung
from the mower’s blade, rainbows
of ribbons [...]

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From whiskey river:
To the Light of September
When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not
and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks [...]

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